Just a Matter of Choice…

I haven’t written anything in months. Not because I haven’t wanted to. Desire hasn’t been the problem. It wasn’t for lack of anything worth saying either. There is always lots to say.

I haven’t written because I haven’t written. I believe most of life’s challenges are bound up in the choices we make and for the last couple of months, I’ve chosen not to write or record.

The choice to remain silent isn’t wrapped up in the answer to some clever riddle. It’s simply a statement of fact. A description of just one of the many choices I’ve made over the past few months. The choice to remain still. Silent. At least, for a while.

Despite my desire to communicate I didn’t.

Like almost everything else, writing — Or rather, not writing — is a choice. A rather binary one at that. You either write or you don’t. You make the conscious effort to communicate, or you remain silent. Consciously, or unconsciously, you either say what you have to say or fill those available minutes with alternatives. Alternatives allow you to cloak yourself in the illusion of action.

I didn’t stop because I had other, more important things to do. I stopped because I was able to fill that time with an adequate number of diversions and deceptions. Excuses sufficient to satisfy the silence and that’s where things get interesting. Where the consequence of choice reveals itself.

The choices you are called upon to make are either consistent with your purpose or are not. They either bring you closer to your goals and objectives or they lead you further away. Since you are the sole arbiter of those choices there are no excuses. Just explanations.

It has been easier to catalog those explanations than it was to write. Easier to ignore what I had to say rather than confront the challenge of saying it and saying it well.

That works until the need to communicate overwhelms the desire to remain silent. Until saying what you have to say is no longer a matter of choice. When you finally find yourself ready to write and record. Ready to break the silence even when it’s been so long you aren’t quite sure if you still remember how.